BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- What we learned as Indiana staked its claim to return to the No. 1 poll ranking -- and grabbed the lead in the Big Ten race -- with a spirited 81-73 victory over reigning top-ranked Michigan before a capacity crowd Saturday night at IU’s Assembly Hall:

ZELLER ISN’T SLIPPING

There are some technical things Indiana star center Cody Zeller isn’t doing as well as he should, particularly his tendency to make some of his inside scoring moves with the ball at shoulder height rather than extended above his head.

He has not been a dominant player, just an essential one.

There might be those silly draft board whispers about him, but the NBA does not conduct its draft over the internet.

What Zeller showed Saturday is that he remains an excellent athlete who runs as well as any recent big man, who has great instincts for the ball and who can elevate farther above the rim than your average 7-foot center.

And when there was a loose ball with 1:42 left and IU up seven points, who was it that tracked the ball down -- even though it was on the other side of the court and he had to close on the ball like some combination of Ray Lewis and Aldon Miller? Yep. Zeller. He beat maybe three Michigan players to recover it, even though each was maybe 10 feet closer to the ball when the scramble began.

Zeller finished with 19 points and nine rebounds on 8-of-10 shooting. He hasn’t played this season like a national player of the year, which is what was predicted of him in the preseason, when he was on the cover of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine. He has played like an All-American, though, and if he continues at this level perhaps he still can retrieve one of the major POY trophies.

IU’S NICE TANDEM

Of all that was missing from Indiana when it lost at home against Wisconsin in mid-January, nothing was more disconcerting than the lack of role definition between point guard Yogi Ferrell and shooting guard Jordan Hulls.

Ferrell had only one assist in that game in 34 minutes, but one reason for that deficiency was how rarely he touched the ball. Hulls spent a lot of the game initiating the attack, and given that the Hoosiers shot 37 percent and scored 59 points, it obviously did not work all that well.

Indiana is much better when Ferrell is the primary point and he can use his vision to look for Hulls, one of the most accurate 3-point shooters in college basketball. Over the past several games, they have developed an excellent chemistry in that regard.

When Hulls hit in transition on a drive-and-kick feed from Ferrell, it became the fourth time in Hulls’ last six made 3-pointers that the assist came from Ferrell.

ROBINSON CAN’T DISAPPEAR

Glenn Robinson, the excellent freshman wing Michigan is using at power forward, has not been able to find a way to matter in the Wolverines’ big road games.

Indiana challenged him with 6-9 senior Christian Watford, and Robinson was frustrated by Watford’s length and guile. Robinson missed his first three shots from the field, including one that Watford blocked right out of his hand. And when Watford finally took a rest and fellow freshman Jeremy Hollowell was in to defend him Robinson got a bump screen at the right elbow that freed him for a foul-line jumper, but he was too off-balance on the right-to-left move to make the shot count.

He made only 1-of-6 shots Saturday night. Adding in his 3-of-8 performance against Ohio State and 3-of-8 at Minnesota, Robinson is a combined 7-of-22 in road games against ranked opponents.

THE BURKE BLITZ

Even when he’s not overwhelming, he’s spectacular. Indiana made a point of punishing Michigan star Trey Burke as much as possible, one reason coach Tom Crean wanted to rotate a variety of defenders against him. Indiana started with its point guard, 6-foot Ferrell, guarding Burke and later switched to 6-6 Will Sheehey, with defensive player of the year candidate Victor Oladipo called in at the end like a Mariano Rivera-style closer.

The Hoosiers played Burke physically, switched off crosses when possible and doubled him on occasion. And still he completed the first half with 14 points, three assists and two 3-pointers. He had to take 10 shots to get that many, which isn’t really his style, but it seemed necessary under the circumstances. He finished with 25 points on 9-of-24 shooting. His highest previous total for shot attempts was 19 at Illinois.

Burke’s two most impressive plays came late in the half. The first was in transition, with Burke pushing the ball on the break and Sheehey waiting for him near the rim. Burke drove the ball in his direction and looked as though he would charge, but at the last moment Burke shifted to the right and cut around him to the goal. It looked like some sort of magic trick, where the magician passes his body through a solid object. Burke missed the layup, but he was fouled on the play and scored two free throws to cut UM’s deficit to six.

Burke was paranormal again on the final play of the half, isolated against a single defender, Sheehey, as the Wolverines chose to kill off the last remaining seconds and Burke decided it was going to be his play to make. He waited, waited, waited -- so long it was going to be difficult to find time to drive. But he had no interest in that, anyway. He wanted to step back into a 3-pointer, and he did, nailing it to make the score 36-32 at the break.

MCGARY AGED A BIT

By that, we mean Michigan’s Mitch McGary matured, grew up, from a guy his coaches had not trusted for more than 21 minutes in any Big Ten game into an essential presence as the Wolverines tried to scramble back into the game following IU’s early explosion.

McGary had played his customary 20 minutes before we reached the eight-minute timeout in the second half, and he finished with 10 points and seven rebounds.

He wasn’t better than Zeller. He wasn’t nearly as good. But he did not back down, did not commit silly fouls and gave Michigan an enormous physical presence that even starter Jordan Morgan, still recovering from an injured ankle and limited to two minutes, does not.

STAUSKAS FAILED TO PUNISH

Gifted with the luxury of being guarded by IU’s weakest defender, the 6-foot Hulls, it ought to have been a huge opportunity for Michigan freshman Nik Stauskas. Maybe in Ann Arbor, it would have been.

In UM’s two toughest road games to date, at Ohio State and here at IU, Stauskas has not been the same player who smokes the nets at Crisler Arena.

At OSU, he was 0-for-3 from the field and did not score in 23 minutes. Against Indiana, he started 1-of-8 from the field over the first 20 minutes and took (and made) only two shots in the final 20 minutes. So that’s 3-of-13 against Indiana and OSU.

On the first trip of the game, Stauskas found himself one-on-one against Hulls on the left wing with room to drive the ball, and he did -- but he failed to finish the play, and neither did he convert the offensive rebound. Stauskas later found four opportunities to fire from 3-point range, and most of those were wide open, but he missed each time.

This was the first game of a nearly impossible stretch for Michigan -- a run of games that likely will be the most difficult any team in Division faces during the regular season: at No. 3 Indiana, home for No. 11 Ohio State, then back on the road for Wisconsin and No. 13 Michigan State. If Stauskas does not learn to play on the road, it’s going to be hard for the Wolverines to avoid a skid.